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How to Talk to Your Kids About Hell

The other day, I received the following comment on an old blog post about hell:

The belief in hell is sown into the hearts of many children which this blog advocates and this belief can reap major consequences. Children grow into adults. Millions of adults are on the edge of a belief in [G]od [and] needlessly suffer with the shadow of hell. They live [in] fear…What a waste…a tragedy.

Hell is one of the bedrocks of the Christian faith. I absolutely reject Christ. I work and pay taxes. I am charitable. I am [a] good father and husband. I am kind, forgiving. I like looking at the stars. Yet, without a doubt under the rules of Christianity I am doomed to be tortured for millions…billions of years. In fact, trillion[s of] years of endless agonizing pain wrap[ped] around for trillions of more years. What is my misstep? I reasoned that earth was old and books suggesting otherwise unfounded.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about Christianity and hell embedded in this comment—and those misunderstandings are quite common. Because there are so many wrong ideas about hell floating around, we as Christian parents must proactively ensure that our kids gain an accurate understanding of this difficult topic. When young people lack that understanding, they’re often quick to dismiss hell based on simple “gut reaction.” But hell is too serious a topic to leave to the discretion of our kids’ feelings. We need to guide their understanding from a biblical perspective.

Like many people, the commenter above implicitly has objections to hell from each of these categories. In this post, we’ll look at answers to the questions using his concerns. For anonymity, we’ll call him Mr. C.

Why Does God Need to Punish Anyone?

When Mr. C says, “Millions of adults are on the edge of a belief in God and needlessly suffer with the shadow of hell,” he is assuming that Christianity isn’t true. If Christianity is true, then people should be warned about the reality of hell and have an appropriate level of concern about it. But Mr. C seems to believe that the whole idea of hell can’t possibly make sense.

A major reason he can’t make sense of hell, however, is because he misunderstands why God would need to punish someone. He believes that, in his case, it would be because he “reasoned the earth was old and books suggesting otherwise [are] unfounded.”

Rejecting the Bible is not why God punishes people. (And, as an aside, plenty of Christians believe the Earth is old.)

God punishes people because of sin.

It’s critical that our kids understand this! As I explained in chapter 4:

“The reality and seriousness of sin is ignored when we suggest there’s no need for God to punish people. To see why that’s such a problem, we need to better understand what sin is. The Bible tells us that God is perfectly good, and that He has written His moral laws on the human heart (Psalm 18:30; 1 John 1:5; Romans 2:14-15). Sin is a transgression against those laws. If God didn’t exist, there would be no sin, because there would be no moral laws to sin against. But if a perfectly good God exists, and humans violate His moral laws, we have to ask, What should God do about it? We expect a penalty for breaking human laws, so why wouldn’t we expect a penalty for breaking divine laws?”

Furthermore, God is both perfectly loving and perfectly just (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 9:7-8; Psalm 33:5; Isaiah 61:8). Justness is the quality of fairly conferring deserved rewards and punishments against a standard of right and wrong. God’s justness and lovingness go hand-in-hand. Just as an earthly judge wouldn’t be loving for setting free those who break human laws, God as a heavenly judge wouldn’t be loving for setting free those who break divine laws.

If sin is real, and God is just, there must be some kind of penalty for that sin.

Who Should Be Punished?

If we’re honest, most of us can get our heads around this idea of necessary punishment—for really bad people. But garden-variety sinners? People who lie, lose their temper, and live more selfishly than they should? We think these people deserve something more like an extended time-out, not hell. In other words, it’s not that we don’t think God should punish people, but that we don’t think He should punish people like us.

Mr. C certainly feels this way, as he listed his qualifications for escaping God’s judgment: “I work and pay taxes. I am charitable. I am [a] good father and husband. I am kind, forgiving. I like looking at the stars.”

Interestingly, many murderers could even fit this description (yes, even a murderer can have moments of kindness and forgiveness—where do you draw the line?). But pretty much everyone agrees murderers deserve punishment (see point 1). So it’s clear we have to take a more objective look at who should be punished.

Romans 3:23 answers that question: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

All.

Not one human is morally worthy of being in God’s presence. Romans 6:23 goes on to say that God has set the penalty for sin as death—which, as the law giver, He has the right to do. The combined picture of these verses is really quite simple, even if we don’t like it: Every single person is guilty of breaking God’s moral laws and He has set the penalty as death.

That’s true even if you like looking at the stars like Mr. C.

What Should the Nature of Punishment Be?

If hell only involved 100 years in jail, we’d spend a lot less time talking about it. But the traditional view that hell is an eternity spent suffering in flames? That’s where many people draw their line of “reasonableness.” In fact, most people have never thought through the logic of the first two questions in this post (why God would need to punish anyone and who should be punished) because they jump straight to the assumed nature of punishment. Those first two questions, however, are critical to understand before you can even consider the nature of hell.

The problem is, our human idea of what’s reasonable has no necessary bearing on what’s true. We simply do not have God’s perspective (Isaiah 55:8). We do know, however, that God is perfect, so His punishment is necessarily completely fair—even if we don’t have the full perspective to understand it. Because we can’t use our own idea of what’s reasonable to determine what’s true about hell, we have to look at what God has revealed about it in the Bible.

Jesus referred to hell as a terrible place to be avoided at all costs (Mark 9:48-49; Matthew 8:12; 10:28; 22:13; 13:42). The severity of hell is something all Christians agree on. There are different views, however, on what exactly the nature of hell is and how long it will last:

Those who hold the literal view believe hell is a place of actual fire where those who reject Jesus will spend eternity. This is what Mr. C referenced in his comment.

Those who hold the metaphorical view believe hell is an everlasting punishment of some kind, but not a literal fire. They say fire is a biblical symbol for judgment.

Those who hold the conditionalist view believe those who reject Jesus will cease to exist. They say the many biblical references to eternal punishment refer to the punishment’s finality, not duration.

Breaking our discussions about hell into these three component questions gives kids an important framework for understanding logical and biblical connections. But we can’t overlook the critically important ending to the story—God has made a way for people to avoid hell if we accept Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as payment for our sins! That’s the crucial other half of the picture. (For help with the rest of this conversation, see chapter 20: Why did Jesus need to die on the cross for our sins?)

As author C.S. Lewis famously said, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”

Reader Interactions

Comments

Thank you, again, for another insightful and very helpful article on Christian apologetics. I appreciate how you broke Mr. C’s misconception about hell into 3 components. It makes it so much easier to understand the error this way. You definitely have a gift for explaining difficult topics in a clear and concise way.

To avoid Hell…you must Believe in your heart…You must admit that you are a sinner. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” You must admit that you need Saving. You must admit that Jesus is that only one who can save you. That He died for you while you were a sinner and took All sin on his shoulders. That He Rose from the dead and changed your status from sinner to Saved when He conquered death and sin. Receive His Free gift of Salvation. You must believe this in your heart. Simply Believe and Receive…No one can come to the Father except through Jesus Christ God’s only beloved son.

This was great. Thanks so much for sharing. You made a point that I’ve never thought of before, one I want to explore a little bit more – the idea of hell being only 100 years. You’re right on the money. In the context of eternity, 100 years is a blip on the radar. If I knew that hell was only temporary, I might not give a lot of thought to pursuing righteousness. I can do whatever I want in this life and only suffer for a little while, but then I’m free? That’s no big deal. Even if it were longer. It might hurt for a little while, but I don’t have to change my lifestyle now. I can just deal with it later, knowing I’ll eventually get through it.

To my thinking, hell is the absence of the presence of God. Since God desires all men to be saved, hell is a human choice, not a punishment imposed by God. Hell as a punishment, to me, means that God is sending you to hell because you rejected him and need a consequence. It implies coercion/threat in some sense. I think instead God is giving us a free choice-he has made it clear the standards that need to be met to enter heaven, and if we choose otherwise, we choose hell. So hell is not so much a punishment as it is a free choice.

On Romans 3:23….all….Jesus was a human and did not sin, babies are human and have not sinned, those who aren’t mentally capable of sinning have not sinned, so we must qualify that the “all” here is not “all” in a strictly literal sense. Through Adam we have inherited original sin, but I’m not certain Romans 3:23 can be used to say definitively that we all have committed personal sin, and as such God has the right to “punish” us. Just my two cents!

Great post, thank you. Hell is a reality so not a subject to be avoided, but it’s still such a hard topic to chat about with our children. As Schaeffer says – it’s something that we should talk about through tears.

Hell, as in eternal, no second chances, no atonement, just endless torture (of whatever kind) seems harsh as a “punishment” for even murderers. About the only thing that seems deserving of Hell is putting people in Hell. But I assume God knows better than me. And hopefully we won’t know that our loved ones are suffering in Hell, because in Heaven there are no tears. But if a murderer murders a Christian they’re just sending them to Heaven, so it’s a good thing. Even the worst crime, rape, only damages someone for a lifetime, so strictly eye for an eye maybe 100 years of similar torture for each person you heart. That could add up, but have an ending somewhere. But really if you just died when you died, who would want to stay alive? I mean maybe some people would think heaven was worth it, and maybe some people who enjoy life wouldn’t die right away. Either way I’m definitely teaching my daughter about Hell, even if I continue doubting God, ’cause I definitely don’t want her suffering forever. And we’re supposed to fear the one who can put us in Hell anyways. If you think about it the little blip of time on this earth is pretty irrelevant in the face of eternity, even if living in fear is uncomfortable.

Thank you for explaining things in a way that we can share with the younger ones. Actually, it is very significant that you explain controversial issues in a way that adults can better understand, so that we can approach discussing these topics with the younger ones. Thanks again! Debbie

I am clearly a terrible writer and I am grateful for the editing. Thank you.

Many christians receive comfort in a faith in god. Their faith is warm, strong and fulfilling. I understand. For decades I embraced the same romantic, uplifting outlook and I was deeply afraid of losing my warm prospective. Yet in truth I needlessly lived with this fear. After god, my outlook is still wonderfully romantic. I still paint open fields and trees. I still adore the late afternoons of summer or the clear night skies of winter. Nothing has adversely changed. I was not turned into a dry atheistic intellectual weighing every ounce of existence.

I feel for people who walk close to both sides of the fence in the belief of god. They live with the fear of hell knowing they are not truly committed to either side. These people will live a life shouldering a fear of being tortured, endlessly. They will live thinking they are broken, sinful, and in danger. Some children are fated for a lifetime with this fear because of their religious upbringing.

If the bible is divine knowledge then the transedence of the bible would be blatantly obvious. The biblical morality and observations would be far beyond the ability of a primitive culture to produce. If the bible was the solely the product of mankind, then the bible would not transcend its writers. Hell seemingly does not transcend a primitive culture. The concept of hell is exactly what we would expect if the bible was written without any divine guidance within a brutal culture. For christians unable to sacrifice or weaken the notion of a loving and mercifully god, the only defense for the transcendence of the bible is to somehow argue against hell’s brutality.

Hell is just one example of biblical harshness that is pacified so that people can reconcile a primitive belief system with modern concepts of morality. Why is this? Because the bible is not transcendent and something must be bent…it has to be. Oddly and sadly, the idea of brutality is the easy concept to bend. Many Christians transform acts of brutality into reasonable, justifiable actions, or worse, infer that we are too ignorant to identify or recognize brutality. It is certainly hard to properly give proper thought to biblical brutality when we are not even allowed to recognize it.

This last sentence in the above really has me a bit down. I am going outside! It’s wonderful weather!

Good response, Natasha. I would add one more thing: It is Mr. C’s rejection of Christ that may qualify him for eternal separation from God, not anything else, not even sin. Sin is forgivable, but as C.S. Lewis said, it is our acceptance of or rejection of Christ that either gets us in or out of hell.